The Reform Movement's letter-writing

In Justine McCarthy's informative piece on Robin Bury and his ‘Reform' movement last week (‘Reform Movement uses the Guardian to bash Irish language', Village 11-18 January), she referred to his ‘ubiquitous' letter-writing to the papers. This is true but she should also have referred to his other ubiquitous habit of not writing to papers when asked to develop his arguments.
For example, he had a letter published in a number of papers in February 2005 which made the interesting claim that: “This island has been cursed by religious sectarianism since the Reformation, all too often characterised by brutal violence and ‘ethnic cleansing'.”

This is very true. It was a rather important point worth exploring as it sought to get to the source of sectarianism in this island. As it is generally accepted that the cure for anything is the elimination of its cause, it would be very useful indeed to establish the source of this phenomenon in Ireland.

I encouraged him to do so by having a letter published in the Sunday Independent (22 March 2005) and asked him to tell us whether or not: “... he believes this was simply a coincidence or if there was a causal connection between the two phenomena-the Reformation and the emergence of sectarianism here.” It was also published by The Southern Star (10 March 2005).

But Mr Bury went silent on the matter and no letters appeared from his prolific pen for some months. As he is now in letter-writing mode again, perhaps he would use your columns to elaborate on this important point, one of most serious issues in Irish history and politics.

Jack Lane
Millstreet, Co Cork